Tuesday, February 20, 2018

You’re Dead. (Mort)

“You may be a barroom gamblerAnd cheat your way through life,But you can’t cheat that little black trainOr beat this final ride.”-Woody Guthrie, 2014

Just this once, EVERYBODY DIES!

Of all the Terry Pratchett novels,
it is perhaps fitting that this is the one that gets tangled up in his project like a poor, unsuspecting piece of bread daintily swimming in a duck pond. Though it is not my favorite novel set within the Discworld1, it is nonetheless the better suited given the thematic interests of this blog. As
with many of the early Discworld novels, the novel’s core is taking a rather
silly fantasy convention2 extremely seriously.

Given this, several possibilities
could arise. What if, for example, Death took a holiday?3 Who works
at Death’s house?4 And, of course, does Death have any relatives?5
But the question at the heart of the book is “Given that Death is a physical
being and thus something someone does, what would happen if the Grim Reaper took
on an apprentice?” Not a lot of good, as it turns out, though it would be wrong
to say this had a completely negative effect. For starters the apprentice
decides to make the rather dumbfounded decision to not let the princess die
when she’s supposed to6. This, in turn, led History to get a bit
vexed over the whole affair7 and forcing its vision upon the world,
whether the Disc likes it or not8.

This of course leads us to the
question: how do you get out of dying? Not in the sense of a near death
experience like almost tripping into the path of a moving train or watching
Jack and Jill. Nor do I mean having a dream where you die, only to wake up. No,
what I’m talking about is the experience of dying and inexplicably not being
dead a few weeks later. The book posits this is done by having some allies on
working within the system of sending souls to the next life, but that tends to
be difficult for systems like the one the Discworld runs on9. One
could try to make friends with the person typically running the whole shebang,
but that tends to be difficult as they’re10 a bit of a shut in who,
like many self employed people, only goes out for work and family11.

But there are other ways out of dying.
Let’s look at the driving vision history wishes to impose upon the world. In
the original scheme of events, Princess Kelirehenna was supposed to have been
assassinated by her uncle, the Duke of Sto Helit, via the subtle methodology of
a crossbow accidentally being aimed in her direction and fired. It was written
that this action would in fact be the greater good12. While the
history of Queen Kelirehenna I would be one typical of a monarch, the reign of
King Duke of Sto Helit13 would unify the lands into a glorious
future.

Some of you may be thinking that if
such a future is in the cards History wishes to deal the Disc, then we must
accept them and let Kelirehenna die for the greater good14. But if
one has any knowledge of history and History, you would of course know that
unifications of such a magnitude at the speed of a single generation hinging
upon which member of a royal family is sitting on the throne is typically resolved
by a series of bloody massive bloody wars, and those that are “prosperous” tend
to be the ones with the same skin color, language, and slightly less money in
possession than the ruling class while everyone else dies horribly painful
deaths.

Suffice it to say, the Great Man
Vision History wishes to impose on the world is rather shit for most people.
The alternative the book provides is… another fucking monarch. Discussing
Pratchett’s infatuation with the monarchy in general and “the right kind of
leader” specifically is for another project15, but what’s equally interesting
is how those Death tasks to fill the role of the Great Man who will unify the
lands and bring prosperity for a hundred centuries aren’t in the mold of Great
Mans.

Consider: firstly you have a
commoner so unimportant that nary a person bothers to say his name, calling him
“lad” or “boy” or something along those lines. Next you have Igneous Cutwell,
perhaps the closest thing the group has to a Great Man in that he works in
profession of Wizardry16. However, Cutwell is simply a first level
wizard and not a very good one at that17. And of course there’s
Ysabell and Kelirehenna, both of whom are quite explicitly not Great Mans.
Sure, they both come from a royal bloodline and they have both been touched by
forces outside what most would call the natural world18, but the
fact remains that they are both clearly not Great Mans because they aren’t men19.

If one were to be generous, one
could argue that these people who have no idea how to be the Great Man of
History, will in turn try to unify the world through means other than the ones
done by the Great Mans before them. Perhaps they’ll take a more diplomatic
approach and try to unify the peoples20 of other cultures via trade
and communication. Perhaps weddings will occur and their children will reign
peacefully. Or perhaps they’ll just say screw it and invade all the other
countries for the greater good21.

But the thing is, we don’t know
what will happen next. Sure, we could make educated guesses as to what will
happen next, but those aren’t necessarily what will happen in the end. If one
is a student of history, as opposed to History, one begins to notice that the
various branches of is and will be tend to happen due to the most inexplicable
of circumstances22. There is no vision of History that can account
for the adlibbing nature of life, for all things are happening at once. The
story of the Princess who didn’t happens at the same time as the tale of Death
the Fry Cook and that of a litter of kittens who drowned in a barrel. Life is
full of inexplicable, contradictory events, not all of which are covered in
History.

And life is better for it. For if
life could be simplified to a mere formula of “And then the rotten king slaughtered
the foreign barbarians, bringing about an age of enlightenment and peace to the
lands for many centuries to come”, then it would be very dull indeed. The Life
Blood of Life23 is these contradictions to the grand scheme of
things. These out of context moments that invade what should be a straightforward
narrative of the rise of Kings and Great Mans, but instead turn the story into
something completely different.

Agents of History will try to
repress alternative views of history that go against History, refocusing the
facts to fit their views. But history has a way of being more convoluted,
contradictory, and interesting than that. So maybe that’s how you get out of
dying: you have to be more interesting alive than dead. And history is known
for finding even the most mundane of things extremely interesting. After all,
you’re still here, aren’t you? Our very existence shapes the history of all
things, despite what History has to say. It can be as large as burning a house
down or as small as opening the door for someone with too much in their hands.
By existing, we shape the narrative of life. The most unimportant of things have
an impact, even an ok book like Mort.

1.“Grim” is a slight misnomer. Far more accurately
would be to refer to him as “The Melancholic Reaper” or “The Reaper Who Feels
Ennui” or “Bill Door.” Regardless, these are all shorter names compared to his
official title: “The Stealer of Souls, Defeater of Empires, Swallower of
Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind” and so on.

3) While the novel does briefly get into the
implications of this question, it is handled more in-depth in Reaper Man4)A rather rubbish1 wizard called
Albert.

1.This refers more to his character rather than
the quality of his magic.

5) No, but he has an adoptive daughter by the name
of Ysabell.6)Though the rational is quite understandable: she
was kind of hot.1

1.It should be noted that the lad isn’t as rubbish
as this implies. Immediately after noticing this aspect of his attempt to save
the Princess’s life, he decided to not treat Princess Kelirehenna like some
prize to be won but rather as a person.

7)Contrary to what one might assume given History
is a sentient force within the universe, humanity does indeed have free will.
It’s just that History would’ve preferred it if they didn’t, much like how many
a director don’t care for any and all adlibbing. Like said directors, History
tends to respond by beating everyone else into submission, only to be
circumvented at the last moment by the editor.

8)Though in truth, the Disc was mostly indifferent
to the affair.9)The system works thusly: a single
anthropomorphic personification takes on the shape of Death and sends the souls
of the dead off to the next life. The exception to this is for rats, wherein
the anthropomorphic personification takes on the shape of Death of Rats.10) Pronouns for Death have always been difficult.
Sometimes Death takes on the usual form of a skeleton in a black robe, other
times they’re a Goth girl with an umbrella, and, on occasion, they’re some
weirdo in a pair of skis working for the God of Evil despite being more of a
neutral force within the universe. For the purposes of this blog, we shall
refer to Death with the gender-neutral pronoun of They/Them/Their.11)Even then, you might be out of luck as Death
spends the majority of the story easing their way into being human via
attaining the dream job of many an English Major: Fry Cook.

12)The Greater Good.13)They really didn’t give him a name, did they?14)The Greater Good.15)Such a project would most likely written by a
better writer than I, like Jed Blue.16)Indeed, wizardry is notable for birthing many a
Great Man such as Alberto Malich and Rincewind the Not-Dying.17)This is more of a problem of “I’m perfectly fine
where I am, no need to go any further” than “I think we can all agree we’d all
be better off if I wasn’t a wizard.”18)The latter via having her death being prevented,
thus causing History to work extremely hard to rewrite things to fit its
vision, whereas the former is the adoptive daughter of Death.19)History tends to be very specific in terms of
what it wants and has been known to rant about the evils of SJWs when that
doesn’t happen.20)As an aside, there’s a bit in the book that’s
terribly racist wherein a clearly Asian culture has their Grand Visser die and
the leads are extremely impatient with all of their “O holy emperor” and “Most
gracious ally” and so forth. It’s just a black spot on what’s an overall quite
good book and makes one suspect that my optimistic reading won’t happen due to
an imperialist’s impatience.21)The Greater Good.1

1.Shut it!

22)One need only look at the Assassination of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which began as a series of failed assassinations
including one humorous bit wherein the assassin who was the closest to killing
Ferdinand tried to escape via jumping off of a bridge. Sadly, he didn’t account
for the shallowness of the water and broke his leg. As the police were circling
in on him, the assassin tried to take a cyanide tablet, but it was expired so
he just puked a lot. The only reason Ferdinand was assassinated in the first
place was because one of the assassins who did escape tried to cheer himself up
for the utter failure of the day with a sandwich at a shop nearby where
Ferdinand’s car would break down. Life is strange, as they say.23)This is not to be confused with the Life Blood
of Rassilon, which kills those who drink it. As Rassilon himself put it when
questioned about it “Why of course you call it “Life Blood.” If you go around
calling it “Poison” or “Death Blood,” no one would be fool enough to drink it.
Now have this healthy beverage, I call it…” and the rest is lost to history,
but no doubt would’ve been called the Healthy Beverage of Rassilon.